by Andrew H Brown

Created on: November 08, 2009

I went for a meal with my son last week and we ended up in an 'authentic' New York diner, part of the Frankie & Benny's chain. Nice enough place with nice enough food, but this isn't a restaurant review so we'll dispense with the niceties and get right down to the beer.

Unfortunately, going for that 'authentic' feel involves serving up macro-brewed pap at inflated prices. The range of beers on offer were:

Corona, Budweiser, Bud Ice, Peroni, Rolling Rock, Scrumpy Jack Cider, Clausthaler (0.5%) and Michelob.
Oi vey, what a choice!

I chose a bottle of Michelob.
The reason?
Was it because I knew I could rely on Anheuser-Busch (the makers of Michelob) to provide me with a tasty product brewed with quality ingredients? - Um...no, it wasn't quite that.
Did I have a burning desire to quaff some adjunct-laden fizz that was more rice, than nice? - Hardly.

No. The simple but sad reason was that I've reviewed most of the other beers except the cider [yuk] and I don't drink 0.5% 'beer' for anyone, anytime, anywhere.
So an icy-cold bottle of Michelob it was.

Anheuser-Busch is the biggest brewer on the planet (that's planet Earth), which proves the old maxim - 'size isn't everything'. They've been around since 1864 and are close to world domination...sigh.
Click on the link if you want to read more.


THEY SAY:
"Super-premium Michelob was developed in 1896 as a "draught beer for connoisseurs." Michelob is brewed with a superior ingredient blend for fuller body with a clean finish, using all imported hops and a high percentage of two-row barley malt."

This beer pours...um, actually, it was served up still trapped in the bottle and completely glass-free. I suppose I could've asked for a glass, but I didn't want to appear elitest, y'know? I'm sure if I had poured it into a glass, it would've been a pale, wishy-washy yellow with an initial sudsy head that soon flopped into nothingness.

I had a good sniff at the bottle though (well, you never know. If I'm going to stick something in my mouth, I like to make sure it's clean).
Not much aroma, but that could simply be because not much could escape the tiny neck. There's a little malt, but not much, and some grainy tones. I think I detected some faint floral hops, but in general it was pretty nondescript.

The taste is not exactly big and bold. Pretty inoffensive, there's not really a lot going on here. My guess is that there's just enough of everything to keep it resembling a beer, but nothing imaginative to

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